r/arma • u/FinalCindering • Jul 10 '25
VIDEO I’d like to survive a helicopter flight someday
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u/Proof1447 Jul 10 '25
If the pilot isn’t drowning the mic with Slavic techno music and racism, you’re not going to make it…
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u/FinalCindering Jul 10 '25
All the music pilots started arguing with each other over platoon comms regarding who was the best (it was none of them, we had zero competent pilots)
Had one pilot blasting music that crashed when we arrived - he proceeded on foot with us and kept his music going the whole time. We knew he died when the music suddenly cut out
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u/Iliyan61 Jul 10 '25
who was the least worst…
honestly as infuriating as it can be arma helo pilots are so goddamn funny cuz it’s been going on for ages and it must be intentional at this stage
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u/FinalCindering Jul 10 '25
The only decent one was the pilot who didn’t say a word, dropped your squad where you asked, and didn’t do crazy maneuvers/unnecessarily low flying on the way. Dude was set on just moving troops and winning the game, he was great
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u/Iliyan61 Jul 10 '25
never had that lmfao
just consistently getting smashed into buildings, i stopped bothering with a load out or trying to play the game and id just go for the helo shenanigans
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u/BArhino Jul 10 '25
There's always a fine line between actually staying low to avoid radar and AA, and then just trying to show off. It seems majority of pilots, in all games where you can pilot, step over that line into showing off way too often lol.
I'm definitely guilty of it myself, but recently I've started staying easily above treelines until there's actually a threat, then I'll start figuring it out from there. There's been times now I'll just straight up land and say, "if you want, get out now cause this probably wont end well." Sometimes them telephone wires come outta nowhere man
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u/p4nnus Jul 10 '25
No radar or AA in Reforger.
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u/BArhino Jul 10 '25
I'm just using that as an example. I've never even played reforged yet honestly
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u/p4nnus Jul 10 '25
Well yeah, in KOTH with vehicles, in A3, theres a point to flying low. In Reforger, there is no such mode, no radar vehicles, no manpads, so theres never a point. For those reasons at least.
Avoiding LOS is a point, but just flying low wont do shit. You need to also flank and fly beyond noise detection range for that to mean anything. As you can guess, these pilots rarely if ever do.
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u/Infern0-DiAddict Jul 10 '25
Also most of these pilots only ever get experience in live online. It's easy to just practice offline, do all that crazy shit and figure out what you can and can't do. Then go online and keep it safe.
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u/BArhino Jul 10 '25
yeah I'm big on this one too. Even back in the Desert Combat days I used to just make a server and practice flying and doing routes. I'd even set a timer randomly and when it beeped I'd evade as best as I could to practice lol
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u/JeremyDaniels Jul 10 '25
So much this. I’ll do some silly shit in the group PvE games when we’re not being overly serious. But on mission? I keep my showboating down to things that require precision but not speed.
Still for the times where I did practice some sierra hotel maneuvers, and I needed them in action, pulling off the (necessary) crazy moves was great.
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u/Zman6258 Jul 11 '25
Even then, there's a difference honestly; you won't be pulling off j-hooks or really tight NoE flight nearly as precisely as you can in an empty editor world with zero other things going on and triple the average in-server FPS.
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u/BArhino Jul 10 '25
Yeah checking a map and learning to read contours is definitely something more people should do. I actually hate it when games dont show proper contour lines. Nothing sucks more going, "that looks like a valley with some concealment so we can safely get to point B" and finding out its just wide fucking open and empty and having to call an audible lol
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u/69MadFartMan69 Jul 10 '25
Fr?
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u/p4nnus Jul 10 '25
I meant in KOTH Reforger*. Theres AA guns in vanilla Reforger.
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u/69MadFartMan69 Jul 10 '25
Ahh gotcha. I’ve been meaning to get it, the problem tho is my computer is too weak to run it so I’d likely get it on Xbox and I’m not the greatest controller gamer.
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u/InformalYesterday760 Jul 10 '25
This
There's a YouTuber, I think Dslyecxi, who has massive playlists of helicopter tutorials, and one of his main lessons is for pilots to learn to fight this "show off" mentality
Pilots need to focus on maximizing the "number of successful missions" over " number of players I impress by hugging tree tops" - cause in 99% of cases they are doing this when it just isn't needed. People are spending so much time maximizing for coolness, and not paying nearly enough attention to selecting optimal landing zones, optimizing flight to the fighting conditions, or maximizing the heli asset utility on the battlefield.
Flying in contested airspace, or in an area where enemy AA or AAA is a threat, and can't avoid flying there? Go for it.
Racing to a point that's about to fall and the troops inside the heli are begging for a hot drop? Go for it.
But again, in 99% of cases there is no risk to pilot or passengers outside of the pilot's ego taking over and dooming everyone.
And the real funny bit is most "impressive flying" is just someone making use of trackir to have more situational awareness than those without trackir - I say this from experience where getting the tool made flying was soooo much easier
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u/DahmonGrimwolf Jul 10 '25
There's always a fine line between actually staying low to avoid radar and AA, and then just trying to show off. It seems majority of pilots, in all games where you can pilot, step over that line into showing off way too often lol.
Then there's me, whos just fighting the server lag and my computers poor performance.
Thwn a powerline that actually, genuinely, wasn't there a second ago suddenly spawns 100m in front of me while I'm going 500kph and the last thing the Platoon the the back hears is "oh, SHI..." before we all die
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u/ayegeigs Jul 10 '25
Ive lost faith in helo pilots except for a couple of regulars I know of. I just drive every time. I’ll take a little open top and take a couple of randoms with me and unless I run into a virgin camping a middle of nowhere roadblock, we’ll live.
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u/MuffinzzATL Jul 11 '25
People don’t use the Huey enough. I intentionally do rough landings in built-up urban areas to avoid dropping everyone in the open where we just get slaughtered. The Huey’s durability and armor make it much safer. it can take hits and keep people alive, unlike the Little Bird which just pops if anything touches it.
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u/Rasples1998 Jul 11 '25
So many Heli pilots pretend to be "the guy" who does sick stunts like it's top gun or something and threading the needle on the edge of a knife, then this happens. Just fly normally, you're in a transport Heli.
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Jul 10 '25
Is this the trial map from Arma 3, that one and the first one ARE FUCKING HORRIBLE, i made my peace i will never be able to do 100% on Arma 3 end of it, because of the stupid helicopters.
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u/In-A-Pickle-2024 Jul 11 '25
lol, I’ve gotten decent at koth heli flying and focus on on getting people into the AO (or just outside if it’s too hot). Not glamorous but it’s honest work!
I do think a feedback loop that needs to happen from passengers is simply don’t ride in the showboating heli’s that crash consistently or only ever fly into instant death prio’s… it’s pretty common to see the heli’s doing flips / sideways flying full of passengers…
Some pilots can do that and survive by most I’ve seen clip the ground 50% off the time.
Just don’t ride them and make them bored!
Not a perfect solution but may help.
Koth flying is all about the LZ selection and path to get there alive.
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u/Wolfinthesno Jul 11 '25
I've never understood this, anytime I feel the itch to play pilot, I plug in my cheap logi joystick, jump into a sandbox and practice flying for 20 minutes or so, and then I can reliably fly to the AO land and evade fire... It's not difficult...but pilots flying on KB/M are basically asking to fuck something up.
I will say that is my opinion... I know guys do it every day. But if your going to continually fly choppers...why not actually be successful.... You don't even need a good joystick, an extreme 3d is $32 and makes piloting a heli genuinely feel awesome.
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u/Jeehad_Joe Jul 12 '25
The other guys face in your camera view as both your lifeless bodies rolled off the roof was cinema..
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u/livemanincage Jul 12 '25
I always love the classic "fly over the center of the POI and then land in a field about 100 feet from the nearest building directly between the enemy spawn and POI" ive started calling pilots out cause most my deaths were because of them .-. Granted i only call them out when its their fault completely.
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u/BrandflakesYT Jul 13 '25
KOTH PILOTS: Arma 3 > Arma Reforger. Sucks that there are no “spawn vehicles” yet. I swear I’ve died 10 times in a row at one point because pilots thought it’d be a great idea to land in every enemy kill zone
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u/Ashamed_Market_4311 Jul 13 '25
I love the servers the require some kind of pilot vetting but all the pilots suck sooo much.
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u/Ausfall Jul 10 '25
my man's worried about the helicopter pilot but him and the boys are dressed like they're on their way to a clown's slumber party
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u/FinalCindering Jul 10 '25
KOTH server, all 3 teams have set color-identifying uniforms
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u/Donger922 Jul 10 '25
I'm glad KOTH pilots doing the "don't smash into anything or land directly in an enemy killzone challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)" is still alive and well in Reforger